A comparative study on effectiveness of forced expiratory technique on improving lung function in chronic bronchitis

INTRODUCTION: Chronic bronchitis is one of the most common chronic disorders in world, with estimates that more than 15 million individuals are affected including approximately 7% of all children. Mortality associated with Chronic bronchitis, although relatively low in actual members, has increased during the past 2 decades, adding to this increase clear evidence of Chronic bronchitis morbidity becoming a greater problem in the inner cities than elsewhere. Chronic bronchitis is characterized by bronchial smooth muscle hyperactivity may be reversed, either with medication or spontaneously. The common Chronic bronchitis stimuli include pollens, inhalants, foods, medications, dyes, air pollution, injection, cigarette smoke, exercise, and cold, dry inhaled air. Once the patient encounters the stimulus, a series of pathophysiological events results in classic signs and symptoms of Chronic bronchitis. OBJECTIVE: To examine the effectiveness of forced expiratory technique along with conventional therapy in improving Lung function in chronic chronic bronchitis. PARTICIPANTS: 30 subjects with chronic chronic bronchitis were selected. They were divided into control group and experimental group with 15 patients each. OUTCOME MEASURE: The outcome measurement is done by spirometer. RESULT: Both groups showed significant improvement in lung function after the therapy program .The experimental group showed a statistically significant improvement in pulmonary function when compared to the control group at 5 % level of significance. CONCLUSION: Treatment with the –forced expiratory technique along with conventional physiotherapy showed a significant improvement in lung function and dyspnoea than control group. It can be used as an effective treatment in improving the forced expiratory values. A well designed trial is needed to study the effectiveness of forced expiratory technique in improving lung function in a large group and to know its long term effect

Two Short Presentations related to Cancer Modeling

International audienceThis paper contains two short presentations related to the mathematical modeling of Cancer. The first part intends to introduce a tumour-immune system interaction, which describes the early dynamics of cancerous cells, competing with the immune system, potentially leading to either the elimination of tumoral cells or to the viability of a solid tumor. The second part of the paper addresses the case where a solid tumor has grown enough to initiate angiogenesis, a process which equips the tumor with its own blood network. Nash game theory is used to model the interaction between activators and inhibitors of the angiogenesis process

A duality method for mean-field limits with singular interactions

We introduce a new approach to justify mean-field limits for first-and second-order particle systems with singular interactions. It is based on a duality approach combined with the analysis of linearized dual correlations, and it allows to cover for the first time arbitrary square-integrable interaction forces at possibly vanishing temperature. In case of first-order systems, it allows to recover in particular the mean-field limit to the 2d Euler and Navier-Stokes equations. We postpone to a forthcoming work the development of quantitative estimates and the extension to more singular interactions

The Mean-Field Limit for Solid Particles in a Navier-Stokes Flow

We propose a mathematical derivation of Brinkman's force for a cloud of particles immersed in an incompressible fluid. Our starting point is the Stokes or steady Navier-Stokes equations set in a bounded domain with the disjoint union of N balls of radius 1/N removed, and with a no-slip boundary condition for the fluid at the surface of each ball. The large N limit of the fluid velocity field is governed by the same (Navier-)Stokes equations in the whole domain, with an additional term (Brinkman's force) that is (minus) the total drag force exerted by the fluid on the particle system. This can be seen as a generalization of Allaire's result in [Arch. Rational Mech. Analysis 113 (1991), 209-259] who treated the case of motionless, periodically distributed balls. Our proof is based on slightly simpler, though similar homogenization techniques, except that we avoid the periodicity assumption and use instead the phase-space empirical measure for the particle system. Similar equations are used for describing the fluid phase in various models for sprays

Convergence to equilibrium for the discrete coagulation-fragmentation equations with detailed balance

Under the condition of detailed balance and some additional restrictions on the size of the coefficients, we identify the equilibrium distribution to which solutions of the discrete coagulation-fragmentation system of equations converge for large times, thus showing that there is a critical mass which marks a change in the behavior of the solutions. This was previously known only for particular cases as the generalized Becker-D\"oring equations. Our proof is based on an inequality between the entropy and the entropy production which also gives some information on the rate of convergence to equilibrium for solutions under the critical mass.Comment: 28 page

Treatment of W. bancrofti (Wb) in HIV/Wb Coinfections in South India

Background: The disease course of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) is often altered by existing or newly acquired coincident infections. Methodology/Principal Findings: To assess the influence of pre-existing Wuchereria bancrofti infection on HIV progression, we performed a case-controlled treatment study of HIV positive individuals with (FIL+) or without (FIL-) W. bancrofti infection. Twenty-eight HIV+/FIL+ and 51 matched HIV+/FIL- subjects were treated with a single dose of diethylcarbamazine and albendazole (DEC/Alb) and followed for a year at regular intervals. Sixteen of the HIV+/FIL+ subjects (54%) and 28 of the HIV+/FIL- controls (57%) were on antiretroviral therapy (ART) during the study. Following treatment, no differences were noted in clinical outcomes between the 2 groups. There also was no significant difference between the groups in the HIV viral load at 12 months as a percentage of baseline viral load (HIV+/FIL+ group had on average 0.97 times the response of the HIV+/FIL- group, 95% CI 0.88, 1.07) between the groups. Furthermore, there were no significant differences found in either the change in viral load at 1, 3, or 6 months or in the change in CD4 count at 3, 6, or 12 months between the 2 groups. Conclusions/Significance: We were unable to find a significant effect of W. bancrofti infection or its treatment on HIV clinical course or surrogate markers of HIV disease progression though we recognized that our study was limited by the smaller than predicted sample size and by the use of ART in half of the patients. Treatment of W. bancrofti coinfection in HIV positive subjects (as is usual in mass drug administration campaigns) did not represent an increased risk to the subjects, and should therefore be considered for PLWHA living in W. bancrofti endemic areas